The physicality of our relationship had diminished since the fateful day he kissed me, but it came back. There were moments where Sorcha wanted to forget, wanted the ache of loss gone, and wanted me to banish it. There are times I wish I could have given him what he wanted, but I couldn’t, and I was kept stoned enough that the gifts were at bay. Sorcha was not shy about it. “Kiss me,” he’d say. We often sat on the bed with our backs to the wall, side by side, our bodies balanced against each other from shoulder to knee, but there were times when Sorcha would sling himself across me, crouched and ready. And then he’d ask.

“I can’t.”

“You could.”

“Sorcha, I can’t.” It hurt to turn him down, but probably not as much as it hurt him to be turned down. He’d sigh, and then he’d settle against me, curled up in my lap like a child, determined to get something out of me. It struck me more than once that the intimacy we had then—with his face tucked into my bare neck and my arms wrapped tight around him—was something deeper and more telling than sex would have been. I knew I was toeing the line, that this was something no one back home would have approved of, but I still wouldn’t kiss him. I held him and stroked his hair instead. We took to sleeping mostly naked under the same blanket. We’d start the night apart, but by morning he was curled against me, and I had an arm around him. It began to feel natural.

I knew the physical comfort I gave him helped, but if I am honest, there came a point where it helped me, too. By that time, I was no longer sure why I was in the City. I suspected that Dirva would never forgive me, and if he didn’t, there seemed no real reason to stay there. I felt, then, that I perhaps should have been trying to scrape together the cash to get back to Rabatha on my own. More than once I resolved to do it, to find some form of gainful employment, but Sorcha was there, and Sorcha was broken, and after the day’s first pipe I had no motivation anyway.